R.S. Clark has a new post at Heidelblog titled The Scandal of Pagans Leading Worship commenting on the rising trend of pastors and clergy allowing "those who make no Christian profession, who regard themselves as non-Christians, non-believers, those we used to call “heathen” or “pagans” to lead worship through leading or playing musical instruments."
This is a timely essay by Scott on a wayward drift that touches too many churches today. It seems that the before-unheard-of idea of "inclusiveness of unbelievers" for the purpose of music in Christian worship is a growing phenomenon; unfortunately one that moves the church in the direction of the muting of the Gospel to the ears of the very unbelievers brought in to aid worship. The rationale, apart from the increased aesthetic of music and singing, is that the talented unbeliever will be exposed to the Gospel. Really? The bright line between lost sinners under God's wrath and the merciful salvation offered in Christ is blurred as churches elevate the vehicle of music aesthetic in worship to a place of importance at or above that of the Word. I was in a church that had unbelieving "cantors" (and, more or less, promoted the idea). Beautiful singing... inspiring! And after two years they moved on to another gig. How can the Gospel be a clear call of repentance and faith to the lost who have already been brought into the worship of the Most High?
Dr. Clark writes:
"Nowhere does the spiritual and epistemic antithesis come to a clearer expression in Holy Scripture than when it considers public, corporate worship. We live in the world, under God’s common providence, with unbeliever’s sharing (Matt 5:48) in God’s common gifts to humanity but when we gather, on the Sabbath, for Christian worship, we withdraw from the common into a special, sacred space and time. It is not a time to celebrate our common humanity with non-believers, it is not a time for cultural, artistic expression and achievement. It is a time to bow before the face of our Holy Triune God and worship him as he as commanded (WCF 21.1). In this sense, holiness is about distinction (antithesis) between belief and unbelief. To make something sacred is to set it aside. That’s what we are, in corporate worship, God’s holy people, his holy priesthood (1 Pet 2:5), a holy temple. It is then that we express our status as a “holy nation” (1 Pet 2:9)."
Amen.
Showing posts with label R. Scott Clark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label R. Scott Clark. Show all posts
Friday, December 3, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
Christ, made like us yet without sin...
The necessity of Jesus Christ being man - fully human no different from us - yet without sin, is essential to God's salvation of man through Christ's life and death. Jesus took no divine short-cuts or easy roads as our substitute (nor could he if he was to be the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of world) in either his obedience as a man to his Father or ultimately in his suffering and dying for us on the cross.
Dr. R. Scott Clark addresses question and answer #17 from the Heidelberg Catechism in his post That He Might Bear in His Humanity:
17. Why must he also be true God?
That by the power of His Godhead He might bear in His manhood the burden of God’s wrath, and so obtain for and restore to us righteousness and life.
1 Isaiah 53:8. Acts 2:24. 2 John 3:16. Acts 20:28. 3 I John 1:2.
Dr. Clark writes: It is with these categories in mind that the Heidelberg Catechism says what it does about the Son bearing in his humanity the wrath of God against sin. We need a substitute and he must be like us in every respect, sin excepted (Heb 4). This is why we speak of “consubstantiality.” He must be one of us. He cannot merely appear to be like us. Why not? Because it was one of us, created in righteousness and true holiness, who sinned, who violated God’s law and incurred the greatest penalty...
... Of course Jesus was more than just a teacher. He was our Mediator and substitute. He came in our place. He came, was incarnate, was born, obeyed, died, and was raised for us (Rom 5:8). That prepositional phrase “for us” says it all.
Read the entire post.
Some relevant scripture passages:
Hebrews 2:17 Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
Hebrews 4:14 For we do not have a high priest who is unableMd to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Hebrews 7:26 For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens;
2 Corinthians 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Phillipians 2:
5b Christ Jesus,
6 who, although He existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace. may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen. [The Collect for Sunday after Christmas-day]
Dr. R. Scott Clark addresses question and answer #17 from the Heidelberg Catechism in his post That He Might Bear in His Humanity:
17. Why must he also be true God?
That by the power of His Godhead He might bear in His manhood the burden of God’s wrath, and so obtain for and restore to us righteousness and life.
1 Isaiah 53:8. Acts 2:24. 2 John 3:16. Acts 20:28. 3 I John 1:2.
Dr. Clark writes: It is with these categories in mind that the Heidelberg Catechism says what it does about the Son bearing in his humanity the wrath of God against sin. We need a substitute and he must be like us in every respect, sin excepted (Heb 4). This is why we speak of “consubstantiality.” He must be one of us. He cannot merely appear to be like us. Why not? Because it was one of us, created in righteousness and true holiness, who sinned, who violated God’s law and incurred the greatest penalty...
... Of course Jesus was more than just a teacher. He was our Mediator and substitute. He came in our place. He came, was incarnate, was born, obeyed, died, and was raised for us (Rom 5:8). That prepositional phrase “for us” says it all.
Read the entire post.
Some relevant scripture passages:
Hebrews 2:17 Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
Hebrews 4:14 For we do not have a high priest who is unableMd to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
Hebrews 7:26 For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens;
2 Corinthians 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Phillipians 2:
5b Christ Jesus,
6 who, although He existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,
7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
8 Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace. may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen. [The Collect for Sunday after Christmas-day]
Monday, August 2, 2010
The Crucified "Disappointment" - His "Ineffectual" Necessary Church
R. Scott Clark on the institutional church... how it is a disappointment... how it says things it shouldn't, and doesn't say things it should... how it is manipulated for political agendas by believers of the right and the left... And yet how this very same institutional visible church, which Jesus established, is not optional for the christian who also wants Him. From one commenter, quoting John Stott, “If the Church is worth Christ’s blood, then the Church is worth our labor and love.”
Here is Dr. Clark's closing that drives the nail home:
"For moderns, who will let Jesus be Jesus it is only a matter of time before discontent sets in. Jesus is most resistant to being re-made or remodeled. He was and is what he has always been: the Holy, Holy, Holy one of Israel and a disappointment. He seems to have disappointed his mother, at least initially, at Cana. He certainly disappointed the disciples (hence Peter’s sword) and the disappointment among the mob in Jerusalem led them to clamor for another and a new new hero: Bar-Abbas.
"Jesus is just a Savior. He established a kingdom manifested in his (visible, institutional) church populated by Peters and Pauls and Judases and lots of other disappointing sinners. He did not give it great outward power or pomp. He gave it a fairly incredible message (a crucified rabbi was raised from the dead and will return in glory) and two rather unimpressive sacraments. It’s understandable why people would be disillusioned. At the root of disappointment is eschatology. Americans and moderns have an over-realized eschatology (yet another way in which evangelicals are thoroughly American and modern; “Shine, Jesus Shine”).
"Jesus is also Lord, however, and he is returning. All the glory folk seek now will be then. When the Crucified Disappointment comes in glory every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Messiah and the Lord of Glory. There will be no question. The empirical evidence will be overwhelming. The noumenal will become the phenomenal. What the pietists regard as private will become public. All social ills will be cured. All institutions will be perfected. The civil state will be no more. Of course, as I wish I had thought to tell my uncle decades ago, when he declared that he would believe the resurrection when it could be reproduced in a laboratory, they will have then what they want now but it will be too late. To have Jesus now (and then) is to have his disappointing visible church now. One cannot have Jesus without his little, ineffectual church. He called us “the least of these” for a reason."
Read the whole thing...
Here is Dr. Clark's closing that drives the nail home:
"For moderns, who will let Jesus be Jesus it is only a matter of time before discontent sets in. Jesus is most resistant to being re-made or remodeled. He was and is what he has always been: the Holy, Holy, Holy one of Israel and a disappointment. He seems to have disappointed his mother, at least initially, at Cana. He certainly disappointed the disciples (hence Peter’s sword) and the disappointment among the mob in Jerusalem led them to clamor for another and a new new hero: Bar-Abbas.
"Jesus is just a Savior. He established a kingdom manifested in his (visible, institutional) church populated by Peters and Pauls and Judases and lots of other disappointing sinners. He did not give it great outward power or pomp. He gave it a fairly incredible message (a crucified rabbi was raised from the dead and will return in glory) and two rather unimpressive sacraments. It’s understandable why people would be disillusioned. At the root of disappointment is eschatology. Americans and moderns have an over-realized eschatology (yet another way in which evangelicals are thoroughly American and modern; “Shine, Jesus Shine”).
"Jesus is also Lord, however, and he is returning. All the glory folk seek now will be then. When the Crucified Disappointment comes in glory every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is the Messiah and the Lord of Glory. There will be no question. The empirical evidence will be overwhelming. The noumenal will become the phenomenal. What the pietists regard as private will become public. All social ills will be cured. All institutions will be perfected. The civil state will be no more. Of course, as I wish I had thought to tell my uncle decades ago, when he declared that he would believe the resurrection when it could be reproduced in a laboratory, they will have then what they want now but it will be too late. To have Jesus now (and then) is to have his disappointing visible church now. One cannot have Jesus without his little, ineffectual church. He called us “the least of these” for a reason."
Read the whole thing...
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